Why cant they kill themselves? Its their bodies right? Why cant someone do whatever they want with their body if they so choose? How is it up to the government to say "You cant because its bad for you".
For the same reason that the government sets speed limits, restricts who can drive (you need to have a lisence that certifies that you are good enough to not be a risk behing the wheel) and makes sure that cars are manufactured to a set standard.
Also, legalising all drugs is bad. For example letting anybody just buy as much antibiotics as they think they need WILL result in bacteria becoming resistant very fast. Look at MRSA.
Where in the constitution does it allow for the government to create a prohibition on drugs? They needed an amendment for the Achahol one, which means that what they are doing is not within its government alloted powers.
The thing about me, is that I'm English. Constitutional arguements are ineffective on me. I know jack shit about the American legal system, but I do know a bit about British law as it referrs to drugs. Don't quote ammendments, I'll ignore them.
And somebody needs to draw the line, for consistency's sake it needs to be the government.
Does there need to be a constitutional ammendment for a national speed limit?
No, they are in prison for using drugs and being persecuted and prosecuted for it.
They're in prison for breaking the law. They're in there for a disproportionally long time because there's no parole for some types of drug related offences.
Why not? What gives you the right to say these people can or can not? Your arguments have no base other than "You cant do it because the government and I know better than you do".
In my case, I do know more about drugs than you. Given that I'm in university studying to become a pharmacy student. And unless you actually want Heroin as available as cigarettes, there does have to be a line drawn somewhere.
And not to mention why should people be 'entitled' to get high? Pot is largely risk free, and tbh, I don't care if it's legal or not. Above that though, no fucking way should any and all drug be legally accsessible to anybody.
People buy and sell them all the time, I personally know people that do this for a living. People take them and OD on them just as much as anything else. Where there are buyers there will be a market.
I was talking legally. I am well aware that people sell drugs when they aren't legally allowed to.
Really? drugs are readily available to buy everywhere, why dont you buy them?
I am aware of that. But since you're so sure, why don't you hop down to your street corner and buy some Methotrexate from your dealer? The drugs I'm talking about aren't just the ones you can smoke, snort or enject for fun and profit. Sure, there are drugs that can be taken for pleasure, but most of them aren't.
For the record, Methotrexate is a
nasty drug. To give you an idea how poisonous it is, in non-cancer cases it's taken once a week (more than that and it's lethal), and when preparing the dose you have to take extra special care not to touch it, because it'll kill the skin cells on your hands if you do. Like I say, there needs to be a line drawn somewhere between drugs being available for all and total prohibition.
The system we have now, while imperfect (there's very little risk to allowing pot to be as available as cigarettes, as long as people don't take it too often) is better than either. If you need the drugs, and you can prove that you need them, you get them. If not, why let people recklessly endanger their lives by taking them?
Because youre afraid you'll be caught? Because youre breaking some law? Or is it because you have a moral code which states that you dont believe it is right to use them?
Option D: None of the above. I don't take drugs because I don't feel the slightest inclination to take them. Same reason I don't drink or smoke. The fact that I'd be putting my future career on the line by taking illegal drugs is entirely conincidental.
The majority of people choose the last one. Sure drug use will go up, but that is where self responsibility comes in. This is not a nanny state nor should it be one, people should make decisions on their own whether or not they want to make these decisions, JUST LIKE they do with the legalized drugs.
Psst, there are restrictions in legalised drugs too. Whether by age (cigarettes or alcohol), or by volume of sales (e.g. asprin). Don't believe me, try and buy multiple packs of asprin from a gas station (NOTE: NOT A PHARMACY. Pharmacists get special legal allowance to sell more).
On the contrary, it could INCREASE the number of employed pharmacists. And Im sure that there will be specific drug stores around that will sell only this.
Depends how far you go with it. If you're talking tetting all drugs be as legal as alcohol, then no there won't. Part of a pharmacist's job is to make sure that what you're prescribed is apropriate for your condition (and make sure that the Doctor hasn't buggered up. Believe me, they know more about drugs than your doctor) and are safe. If you're letting drugs be as available as cigarettes (and I'm talking all drugs, not just the "recrational" ones) then there's no need for a pharmacist to be in the chain. And in that case you'd be letting untrained people sell hard drugs with no idea of the risks.
Not to mention that pharmacies can already sell (i.e. dispence) hard drugs. They're kept in a safe and referred to as Controlled Drugs, or CDs.
Also you seemed to be harboring some sort of negative feelings about mankind in general, that we cant allow "Tom, Dick, and harry" to have access to things if they want to, or be able to buy and sell if they want to.
Call me when every Tom Dick and Harry knows the difference between Acetylsalicylic Acid, Acetaminophen and Diacetylmorphine.
There's a reason that legislation of drugs went from allowing sales of morphine in children's medicines available over the counter to keeping morphine locked up in a safe. And it's not because the man doesn't want you having a good time.
Do you not understand how many jobs creating a legalized drug market will sell?
Not as many lives that will be put in danger by it.
And just like any other industry it will be regulated by the free market. Someone buys some bad shrooms? They stop going their and tell their friends, that company/business stops selling them or makes the quality of their product better just as they do in every industry in the country.
Bzzt wrong. The manufacturers would go bust. The drugs you can buy on a street corner are actually unprofitable for a pharmaceutical company. They can be made by anybody with a permit, which means that they are dirt cheap to sell.
A drug is profitable for about 5 years. After that, the patent runs out and they'rew worthless.
And legalization would pull these people out of the shadows, no longer will they have to sell in the ghetto but they can open their own small businesses and make good money for themselves and/or their families.
It'd put the afghan drug smugglers out of buisness for sure. All it'd be doing in the west is giving dealers legitimisation and MUCH higher quality merchandice.
The argument was whether or not they CHOOSE to take other drugs over morphine, not simply that Morphine may or may not be superior to them.
If they don't want morphine to kill there pain, or it makes them feel like hell, there are other insanely potent pain killers available to them.
If someone with Cancer is dieing and in terrible pain why cant they smoke a jay or pop some shrooms? Its their body. Surely you have some sympathy for the cancer patient and their wants?
If you have a cold, why can't you just take some penicillin? It might not help you, and it might have bad effects, but it's your body, right?
You have a habit of calling arguments you dont agree with shitty. I didnt know you were a practicing doctor whom was aware of every case of this and every study taken, Ill give way to your near omniscient mind.
Not a doctor, a pharmacy student. Very little diffreence as it applies to this arguement though.
A cancer patient has been shown to be able to hang on longer in their respective treatments if they are happy rather than depressed, I know this first hand as I have witnessed it personally several times. If they can perhaps hang on for a couple more days isnt it worth it?
Depends on the cost. If they live an extra 6 weeks at the cost of £21,000 ($32,237.10) no. Before you think I'm pulling numbers out of my ass, that's the cost of Chemo drug Avastin, and how long it usually keeps them alive.
They might still die but isnt that more reason to allow someone to do with their body as they please? If someone can drink and smoke why not smoke pot or snort some coke? Its their body right?
And what's the point of allowing a terminal cancer patient to do whatever the hell they like? If there's an actual medically justifiable reason for them to take cocaine or cannabis, then by all means they should be allowed to take it. But when have you ever been prescribed something because you want it?
Ever heard of a free market? We can already buy guns, alcohol, fireworks and at home depot everything needed to make a weapons grade explosive. Why cant we buy drugs? See this is the issues, you think people are inherently too stupid to make their own decisions in life and use drugs if they so choose, but you nor the government has the right to tell these stupid people "You cant use it because its bad for you", it didnt work during the prohibition and it doesnt work now durring this one.
The pharmaceutical industry is just about the furthest thing from a free market that there is. It's an industry where profitable items are only able to be sold by one manufacturer, where every drug that reaches the market has to be proven to have some clinical value, then proven to be safe in two species of mammals (usually rats and dogs), then proven not to be fatal to humans, then proven to actually "work" in practice (i.e. that they are in improvement on the exicting drug), and then sell as many as they can, for as much as they can as fast as they can.
Free market ecconomics don't work when the industry itself is as heavily regulated as the pharmaceutical industry.
I would trust these drug stores a lot more than I would trust Jimmy on the corner. And like any other businesses these people if they sell something poor would lose business just like if you bought a shitty grill from a BBQ joint. You dont seem to have a lot of faith in the free market and self regulation either...
When a market isn't free, I don't subscribe to the theory that the free market will sort everything out. And when an industry is incredably externally regulated, I don't expect that internal regulation will work either.
And you needen't worry about Jimmy selling bad shrooms. Every batch of shrooms will have to be tested to ensure that it is within an acceptible range of "purity" (Not sure what word to use here, so i'll go with that) before it is taken to the (un)free market.
Why? Because people are too stupid to use them responsibly so the big good government has to stop them, because they might get hurt, oh no.
Let me put it this way, over precribing antibiotics hurts EVERYBODY in the long run. Remember when MRSA was a big threat? That was caused by overprescription of antibiotics (and people being stupid and not finishing the course). And as for Acetaminophen, that's the most common cause of accidental liver failure. That's the reason that only pharmacies can sell more than 32 to one person.
Even the legal drugs aren't that legal.
People should be able to persue their happiness whether it be sitting on their front porch, shooting up, and shooting squirrels all day, or pursuing higher learning in academia. Just because you and the government dont view the former as righteous doesnt mean they dont have as much right to it as any other.
Why should people be entitled to take drugs? Give me an honest, legitimate reason why, other than because it's "right", and that "It's my body, and therefore my choice". There is no reason that you should be allowed to do anything.
There is a reason that the choice of whether or not so sedate your children with opium (there was actually a product marketed to mothers for exactly that purpose, becore you call bullshit) was taken out of the hands of people. And that for years medicines were classified as poisons.
If a patient CHOOSES to use these why cant they? Because you and your morals say its wrong? Now thats a shit argument.
My morals are irrelevent, and have nothing to do with why I don't think all drugs should be legalised just because people feel entitled to but whatever the fuck they like into their bodies.
When did you get to choose what you were prescribed?
Not to mention that they're examples of the placebo effect. The Salt water injection "feels" like a more dramatic intervention thus it's more effective.
I believe you mean shouldnt.
I do indeed.
And no they are not. Ive seen drugs ruin families personally. Ive witnessed these horrible atrocities first hand. So lame? I think not, no more "lame" than your foolish ideals which state that you and the government know better than the big bad drug user.
But the effect of drugs on people's families due to addiction, is a secondary reason to why I think drugs should be strictly regulated (which they are). Which is because drugs are incredably dangerous and the average joe
doesn't understand the risks. With driving the risks are obvious. you are traveling fast and if you hit something it will hurt somebody. The thing you hit and/or you. With drugs people don't understand the risks. They might understand some of the risks, the obvious ones for example but not the rest. Take someone who wants to get high on methadone and they decide to wash it down with Grapefriut juice. Do they know that it'll mean more methadone stays in the system and that if they decide to get high later on they risk ODing?
People died when drugs were unregulated. And that's why drugs have to be rigerously tested before they hit the market. Ask your Mom if she remembers Thalidomide. Or alternatively google image search for "thalidomide children".
Drugs are externally regulated because internal regulation simply doesn't work.
Thus why I ask if we should change it. See people still can and will buy and sell and use them, if theres a buyer theirs always sellers. What legalizing them would do is bring it into the open, for more regulation, better sellers, more education and FREEDOM OF CHOICE for pursuit of ones individual happiness . Something our founders believed in more than anything else.
I don't give a damn about the founding fathers of America or their philosophies. And believe me, the pharmaceutical industry is more than regulated enough for internal regulation to make a significant difference.
And imo, this system isn't perfect, but it's the best compromise between prohibition and free for all.
In your opinion, but then you seem to think every "Tom, Dick and Harry" is mentally ******ed as well because they cant be responsible enough to be able to buy drugs if they want.
Legally, in order to do anything with drugs in the UK you need a licence. And you don't have to be ******ed not to understand the risks of taking drugs. Because there are a lot of risks that believe me, you won't have considered.
